Choose Your Last Words
by missanomalous
Summary: Sybil seeks out the only one who understands her. Contains character death and incest


**Title:** Choose Your Last Words  
><strong>Pairing:<strong> Sybil/Mary  
><strong>Rating:<strong> NC-17  
><strong>Length:<strong> 3, 850  
><strong>Spoilers:<strong> The Christmas Special  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Sybil seeks out the only one who understands her.  
><strong>Notes:<strong> Contains incest and major character death.

* * *

><p>"Please, just tell me," Sybil whispered as she stared helplessly down at the bassinet that had been erected next to her bed. Her freshly changed son wailed in return, and Sybil sobbed again. The nights like that had become too common, the constant cries fraying her while the too-sunny spring days dulled her edges all over again.<p>

The brunette glanced back despairingly to the other side of her bed, and all of the air in her chest ceased to be and left her gaping. The tears, though, dried as well, as if it were too tiring for her to even think about shedding another. _'And maybe I am too tired to cry,'_ she thought bitterly as she glanced down at her son. He was a handsome one, when he was quiet. They say he took after Sybil, and it wasn't hard to see why. His complexion, his lips, his eyes, his dark curls; he was going to be a heartbreaker. She knew it and she already resented it. Sybil still had a piece of Branson, and she didn't even get to see him in it.

"Well, why would I be so lucky?" she asked her screaming son as she touched his red cheek. He stared back at her with her own blue eyes, an unfair trick if she ever saw one, and made another attempt at communication through a seemingly feral call. It sent Sybil springing off the bed to cross the floor in half a beat to end up in front of the bureau. She looked out at the night sky, at the full looming moon that gazed down on her as she poured the honey-coloured liquor from the decanter into one of her grandmother's favourite crystal glasses. A bottle of Irish whiskey she had brought back with her on her ever-extended visit.

"M'lady?" Minerva's meek voice came half a second after the creak of the door opening. Sybil mulled over how much appreciation she had for the fact that Mini always tried to let Sybil quiet the baby on her own, to be a normal mother, without the flock of help ready to catch her when she undoubtedly fell. But she always seemed to walk in right around the time the brunette had taken her first sip.

"I've tried everything," Sybil rasped, her voice catching in her throat. The only thing that helped the hard lump go down had been a particularly large swallow of her night-cooled drink.

"I'm sure you did, m'lady. They're fickle at this age, is all. Just need time. Nothing but time'll do." Mini bustled into the room and scooped up Sybil's child, bouncing him in her arms and cooing at him like she was happy to be awake. Sybil bit her cheek and shook her head. "Why don't I take him down so you can get some rest, m'lady? I'm sure there will be more lawyers up tomorrow wanting to talk to you and Lady Mary."

_Mary_. Sybil's hand tightened around the decanter as she finished off what was left of her glass. "Don't be silly. Taking him through the halls at this time in that state. He'll wake the whole staff with that voice of his." She offered Mini a strained smile and turned abruptly. "I've things I need to discuss with Lady Mary. About the lawyers," she added, striding across the room and exiting before her child's nanny could object.

The halls of Downton had a wonderful emptiness in the midst of night, and the whiskey seemed to give Sybil a sense of warmth she hadn't felt in the halls of her home in more than a year. Her fingers danced along the smooth stone as she held the crystal in her hand up to the light streaming through the windows, smiling as it caught moonbeams and sent them dancing across the walls. For a moment, Sybil had felt entirely too normal, wandering the halls of the place she was born – until she had to stop abruptly at Mary's door, having forgotten where she had been going. The young mother took a moment to compose herself before gently pushing the door open.

She wasn't surprised to see her eldest sister still up, a book unopened in her hands as she stared blankly across the room. Her brown eyes flitted over to Sybil, then the decanter in her hand.

"My nephew has driven you to the bottle, then."

Sybil's lips had quirked despite her sullen self. "He's not the only culprit."

A sad smile was given in return as Mary set her book aside. "Come join me, Sybil darling. You're the only visitor I could bear at the moment, I fear." Sybil understood, truly, but she didn't move to sit with her sister straight away. Instead, she fell back against the door and tipped the crystal to her lips again. "Granny would have killed you if she'd ever seen you do that."

The expensive Irish whiskey almost ended up spat all over Mary's imported rug, but Sybil had managed to swallow it all down before laughing – so hard it brought tears to her eyes. She wiped her lips and bound across the room, sliding under the covers and handing her Grandmother's heirloom over to her sister before she built up the pillows behind her. Sybil had just finished tucking her feet under her sister's shins when Mary had taken a drink herself. "That is positively _vile,_ dear."

"It is not," Sybil countered, grabbing her prized possession back. She did her best not to stare too openly at the healing cut above her sister's eyebrow, covering the line as she brought her drink back to her lips, the edge of the decanter's rim taking the scar's spot. She cringed as the whiskey burned her stomach and closed her eyes when her vision swam. When she opened them again, Mary had placed the expensive crystalware on her end table and was brushing Sybil's hair behind her ears. "He won't stop crying, Mary. He wants-"

"He's a baby, Sybil. He doesn't want anything more than a teat and a warm bed. They're a lot like men that way," Mary replied drolly, though her thumb brushed across Sybil's cheek so tenderly it allowed the youngest sibling to forgive the sarcastic tone of her elder. "All he needs is you. There are hundreds of children who would be lucky to have even that."

"You sound like Anna," Sybil mumbled before giving a shuddering breath.

"She has her moments," Mary mused, twirling a chocolate lock between her fingers. "All that little boy needs is his mother. Be lucky he's healthy and here."

A silence settled in on them as the death toll of the last few years tallied up in their heads. Sybil chewed her bottom lip as Mary played with her hair and suddenly she felt a guilt settle deep in her chest at the resentment she had felt towards her son.

"I'm not meant to be a mother-"

"Oh, enough of this. You're a wonderful mother and you were a wonderful wife. Situation being what it is, everyone is astounded you've held it together as well as you have." Mary's eyes locked with Sybil's. "Granny was so proud, you know. Of you and how well you were handling everything. It's what we were talking about. You've been… remarkable."

Another deafening silence inside, while outside the springtime air was alive with the insects that made their homes in the pools of waters on their land. Sybil's hand reached up to catch Mary's and brought its fingertips to her lips. "And she adored him, you must know that. The only great-grandchild she'll ever have met. She loved him. Her eyes, she loved to boast, even though we all know they're so uniquely yours."

Sybil kissed Mary before she knew she had even leant in, but as soon as she had, she pressed forward. Her eyebrows knitted together, fingers clutching around Mary's as if holding onto her sister's hand was the only thing keeping her from floating off the bed. Mary, to her account, didn't slap her away, nor did she encourage her. Her sister, it seemed, was stunned. And soft. So unlike Tom Branson, that Sybil yearned for more. More of the same, more difference, she needed more of anything other than the turning of her stomach, the stinging of her eyes, and the emptiness of her heart.

"Sybil." It came as a sharp gasp, but Sybil surged forward and covered the next. "_Sybil_." Another plea fell on deaf ears and so Sybil gave up trying to cover the sounds and instead tried to change them, sending her kisses skittering across Mary's cheek and down her jaw. "Sybil, _stop._"

And so, she did. She pulled back, breathless and dizzy, and took in her older sister, Countess of Grantham, if her son's lineage had no say in the matter. Mary looked scared, yes, but there was something that made Sybil realize, for the first time, that she and her sister were truly one in the same: missing something. Needing something. They both had a hole in their chests left there by lovers now past. But Mary hadn't drunk half a decanter of whiskey that evening.

"What on earth are you doing?" Mary's tone didn't quite match the glint in her eyes, but it didn't matter anyway since Sybil's heartbeat had been making it hard for her to speak. Her chin was caught and forcibly grasped by her sister, pulled forward and brought in close to Mary's face again. "_What,"_ harsh, unrelenting peppermint breath mixed against Sybil's own, "on earth are you doing, Sybil?"

"Don't you love me, Mary? My dear, sweet sister." Her words tumbled out without consent or thought as she leant in closer to the older woman.

"You're drunk, Sybil. And tired. I can blame this on either one, or both. I've heard stranger things have happened-"

"Aren't you tired, Mary?" Sybil asked quietly, holding Mary's hand and gazing at her with half-lidded eyes. "Aren't you just… _tired_?"

"I…" Mary's skin was so milky white that the pink scar above her left eyebrow seemed as prominent as the day she received it. "I suppose I am rather."

When Sybil kissed Mary again, her sister not only didn't fight her, she kissed back. Cautiously, at first, as if Sybil and Edith had devised all of it as a part of some elaborate ruse to catch her in some act of perversion. Sybil, however, tried not to give reason to think she was not committed. She pulled Mary close and her hand dropped from the jaw she was holding so carefully to the bodice of Mary's nightgown, tugging haphazardly at the loose laces that were done up at the front of it.

"Surely you're joking," Mary muttered against Sybil's lips, her attempt so half-hearted Sybil had to snort in return. "I'm glad that this has turned out to be a great jest after all then."

"It's not that, it's just… you seemed to give up rather easily."

"Are you calling me a slut, Sybil? It's one thing to hear it from Edith, but I don't think I can manage it from my sweet baby sister. Though, when your hand is undoing my nightgown, I suppose I'll have to take things as they come at me." Sybil laughed again, at the ridiculousness of the situation she had gotten herself into while Mary stared up at her, her brown eyes warm, as they often were when they stared at her darling younger sibling.

Sybil's eyes glanced once more up at the scar above her widowed sister's eyebrow. "You say I'm the remarkable one, but it's you, truly, who's been remarkable through all this. Who's lost everything."

"I still have you though, Sybil darling," Mary said in that painfully wistful voice that made Sybil's heart ache. "Promise me that I'll always have you."

"I promise." Her promise was sealed with a kiss, tender and too long to be friendly. "You'll always have me." Her fingers were nimble, well practised at removing her own similar nightgowns, at seeking out the sensitive stiff peak of her own breasts - all this as she kept kissing her sister, harder and harder. The familiarity of the act, the difference of the lips she felt, it was what she needed.

Her hands left goosebumps in their wake on Mary's skin and brought small gasps from her lips. The newness of this form she had seen every day of her life was intriguing, but no more than the sound that Mary would make when her fingers pressed a taught nipple between them. A strained breath that made Sybil yearn to hear more of this hidden side of this woman she knew so well. She pulled back to look at her half-undressed older sister, a ghost of a smile on her rose-coloured lips.

"You look like a painting."

"You smell like an Irishman."

Sybil reflected at Mary's ability to use any excuse for a joke as she ducked her head – an attempt to hide just how big her smile had grown. "You must think me a pervert."

"I think… I think we're both going to hell, so we may as well make the best of it." The way Mary had said it was soft, but there was an edge that melted Sybil's smile. A weary, apprehensive undertone. Still, her hand skimmed down from the front of Mary's nightgown to the hem, toying with the edge for a good full minute before slipping under.

By the time a hand had reached the top of her knickers Mary's breathing was ragged and rough, her nails pressing crescent marks into Sybil's hips. "Oh, come now. Let's not pretend we're blushing maids," Sybil teased, kisses fluttering across Mary's lips.

"Let's not pretend we're not sisters," Mary snapped back, "and women, for that matter. This isn't… France, you know. In England we _do_ have some sense of decorum."

Sybil pressed further, before she lost her nerve, before it all went to hell. She pressed past the silk, past the coarse curls, and into the warmth that awaited her before her sister could protest more. She was rewarded with an altogether un-Mary-like response: a high, feminine whine and a wanton buck of her sister's hips against her hand.

The threshold had been crossed then, Sybil realized, one they couldn't come back from. No more was it a joke to giggle about later on, something they could roll their eyes at the next day. Mary's eyes were wide and searching, half-formed words on her lips that Sybil had no response to, so she kissed her again; stealing any more questions from Mary as her hand moved uncertainly between taut thighs, earning echoing moans against her mouth.

It was instinct from there, the motion of her hand moving to the sounds Mary would make in return, her sister's face more open and honest than Sybil had ever seen it, even more than the day she woke up in the hospital after the accident. The light, whimpery gasps came closer and closer together until they peaked and stopped and Mary was left breathless and sated underneath Sybil.

"Was it alright then?" Sybil blurted as she dazedly stared at her slick hand in Mary's dimly lit room.

"Alright?" Mary, patient as ever, managed to laugh. "Sybil-darling…"

"Mary, I've a secret to tell you, and you must promise not to tell a soul."

"Oh, yes, let's wait until now to sign that binding contract."

Sybil leant down close, nudging Mary's hair aside with her nose. "If you must know the truth, I think I might be a bit canned up," by the end of the sentence it was so nearly incomprehensible by giggles that Mary had found herself laughing along with her youngest sister.

"You are truly are remarkable to be able to seduce your older sister and then have the nerve to tell a joke, you know. There must be some sort of Greek tragedy resembling us. Or perhaps we're too damaged for even the Greeks to touch…" Mary had trailed off when she noticed Sybil's smirk, her hazy blue eyes. "Well, don't hold your tongue on my account."

"Did I seduce you? Truly?" She held her head in her hand and stared at Mary as if she were the only person in the world. "I suppose I hadn't thought about it-"

"No, I suppose you haven't thought much at all tonight, have you?" The edge had returned to Mary's voice, but it again had only left Sybil wanting _more_. She ducked her head in closer again, once, to give Mary a chance to reject her, then again when she saw a not-so-reluctant sigh escape her sister's lips. Sybil smiled before she kissed Mary, and then pulled back.

"No, I suppose I haven't." She was unrelenting then, in taking her kisses, in demanding Mary's hand and sliding it under her own clothes. She's not without her manners, though. She begged, "_please, please, please,_" into the crook of Mary's neck, shifting her comfortable position when Mary grew tired of being under her, gave reluctant kisses when she was sure she couldn't breathe simply because Mary requested them. When she came apart, it was with a startling moment of clarity; her blue eyes connecting with Mary's brown ones as she gave a breathless cry.

They were quiet for a long time afterward, touching out of mutual reluctance to move. Mary's hand rested on Sybil's hip, Sybil's hands clutched at Mary's nightgown bunched between her fists. It was a soothing silence, in Sybil's mind, though she couldn't imagine what Mary had been thinking. That's why it had been such a startle to her when she felt the tears slipping out, sliding across her nose and falling between them. Mary was quicker to react than her, rising from her position at once.

"It's okay, you know. If you thought about… I would imagine you would want to, wouldn't you?" Mary stood from the bed and behind the screen in her room, undoubtedly stripping from her sweat-soaked silk nightgown.

"Did you?" Sybil asked with more certainty than she felt, her voice strained but clear.

There was a brief pause from the ruffling behind the screen, the shadows on the wall behind it stopped dancing for a moment and became as still as the wallpaper they moved so gracefully across. "Yes. A little." The rusting recommenced. "Except, when I was looking at you, obviously. It was a bit hard to then." Sybil was sitting on the edge of the bed when Mary reappeared, dressed in a similar nightgown to the one she had on before. "So, it's alright."

Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham had an impeccable eye for glassware. The crystal decanter she had fought for from her father's estate not only picked up the deep ambers in the whiskey that filled its form, but also had a perfect lid to fit the top, with a seal that kept the smell as fresh as the first day Sybil had poured the liquor from the bottle to glass. It reminded her so much of her wedding, of the breath of her new in-laws as they twirled her on the dance floor and laughed in thick, slurred accents. They adored her then, but it seemed that now they barely knew her.

"The thing is," she managed despite the tightness that had developed in her voice as the result of a fair drink she had taken, "I didn't think about him at all. I should have though, shouldn't I? Isn't that what a widow does? How she mourns when she finds herself in another's bed?"

"Oh, darling." Mary is again her older sister, a comforting arm that would wrap around her shoulder when she needed it, another young wife who lost her husband too soon. "I don't think there are any 'should haves' in these types of situations. Should nots, perhaps…"

The startling thing, it would seem, is how simply it begins, and how smoothly it continues. Sybil knows that no one bats an eyelash when the two recently widowed sisters become closer, when the nephew suddenly develops a favourite aunt because she's hardly apart from his mother now. That's what happens in times of grief. After all, Mary was in the same car that flipped with Cousin Matthew and the Dowager Countess, and it was just a month prior to that Mary had picked up the telephone after Mrs. Branson had taken a full day to telephone the news from Dublin to Yorkshire that she had lost both her husband and son in a riot. Mary had been the one who Sybil had clung to then, now Mary was clinging to Sybil. There's an emptiness they both have, that seems less hollow during their stolen nighttime moments.

Edith is jealous; she seethes with it because she is again left out, despite being the only happily married sister. But she is again the odd man when she returns home. Mary and Sybil don't go out of their way, but the difference is there: the way Sybil naturally slides to take Mary's arm, the way Mary always seems to be the one to end up with the bouncing baby boy, the way they seem to just gravitate back towards each other after making the rounds in the endless garden parties. Edith sees it, she hates it, but she sees the chinks in their armour too.

Sometimes Mary will stop in the midst of a sentence as if any given word will peripherally remind her of something Matthew said or did. It's as if she's lost her very soul some days, the light in her eyes is so dim. Sybil is different, she makes no attempt to deny her pain at the loss of her formally star-crossed love, but Edith knows she's lost being a mother without a husband to raise her son with. So Sybil seeks out the wisdom of her older sister, it seems only natural to do so. Mary always had a soft spot for her youngest sibling, always saw her as a doll to dress up and take along with them. While she and Edith, upon their own doing, had been bred to compete at an early age, Mary had taken to Sybil upon first glance of downy fuzz on her head. _"She is my_ real _sister, Edith is the one they bought. You can tell by our hair,"_ she used to say, so no one wonders when Mary takes to walking the grounds with her sister rather than her new suitor of the month.

If there's more there, they dare not read into too much. The truth is, they were tired, and the weight of secrecy had begun to drag on them. Still, Sybil finds she can appreciate the sun a bit more when she's walking through the gardens with Mary and her son. She steals a kiss, placing it on the back of Mary's shoulder quicker than she can blink, and holds her son closer with bated breath as she waited to see the warm flush spread across her sister's neck.


End file.
